Homecoming
by Nick Smith
Summary: A man with a dark lineage must escape the Abyss to find his lost love. Yet not all is as he left it. Warning:Contains lots of violence.Please R&R.


I took some of these characters off of other, more talented people. Thanks to Salvatore for giving me a jumping off point for my story. Some of the characters were lifted off the Baldur's Gate series. All else is mine. This is a really rough draft, and I'll improve it soon. Plz R&R...  
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This mortal soil around me  
Mortal feeling I have found  
Surrounded by your glory  
Hold me now  
So that I never die  
-Rossdale  
  
Part 1: The Abyss  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Everybody begs in time. The demon had told him that.   
  
He sat naked, alone on a giant mushroom, noxious mist swirling around him.   
In the stagnant waters, figures crept out, hideous and deformed.  
The mushroom throne, once sat upon by one of the most feared beings in the Abyss, lay empty at his side.   
He too felt empty, lost, confused. He would have once called it sadness, if only he remembered how it felt. He left such emotions behind anyway, as he discovered they only caused weakness in even the strongest being here in the Abyss.  
And now his grand father, his tormentor, was dead, killed on the material plane. He was one of the last in line, part of his blood the same as Errtus. If ever he felt proud of his lineage, then it had disappeared when he had been forced into the Abyss.  
Lesser demons, who in the past would not dare approach, crawled nearer to the throne.   
Creatures who would send any sane men run screaming did nothing for Kendrick. They were his kin, one and the same. They were coming to kill him.   
Kendrick retreated into himself, unwilling to think or move. Errtu had tortured him for so long that Kendrick remembered nothing else, nothing of his past life. He was a shell of the man he once was. Now that Errtu was gone, he had no one, nothing.  
Except the sword and the bracers. He had gone to his Errtus treasure cove and retrieved them, the only thing he had wanted. They had been important to him before all this, although he did not remember why. He drew them near him, like a mother holding her baby. The bracers, one red, the other blue, lay on his lap. They were made of the softest leather, with complicated elven runes carved on them. They were bracers made for blade dancers, some of the best swordsmen in Faerun. They began to glow, brighter and brighter, until the light surrounded him and enveloped him in its warming embrace. Two voices filled his head, soft and childlike, chanting the same name over and over: Analyn. Emotions flooded his consciousness, love, jealousy, sorrow, resentment. His eyelids fluttered open, his red eyes narrowing. He remembered what Errtu had taken from him, what his life was before the Abyss. He slipped on the bracers, the blue on his left forearm, the red on his right. The scabbard holding his katana floated off the ground and attached itself to his back. He felt...something. Joy perhaps, though he had not been happy in more than several decades. He felt complete.  
The demons could not hold back any longer. They swarmed the throne.  
The voices yelled in his head, warning him of danger. Instinctively, he drew his sword from its scabbard, as he spun, facing the charging demon. The long, slim blade crackled with electric energy, glowing a fierce blue. Kendrick jumped over the closest demon and its swiping claws which such speed that the demon did not have the time to dodge the descending sword. His blade came down onto the beast's back, slicing its spine. Electricity coursed through the creature, frying its body to a crisp. The demon fell to the ground, writhing and squealing in agony. So fast was the attack that the other demons had no time to react. A bat-winged beast, one of the stronger demons, flew down at him, a rusty scythe in its hands. It slashed at Kendrick's neck, the curved blade coming in quick and deadly. Kendrick blocked the scythe with his sword, letting it slide down his blade to the crosspiece. The demon tried to pull up, but the tiefling grabbed its arm with his other hand, holding the beast back. He drove his blade upwards, into the demons belly, burning it from the inside. The goat faced demon, panicked and in pain, yanked his arm away and flew upwards. Unfortunately, it forgot about the blade still imbedded in its stomach. As he flew away, the sword slid down his stomach and groin, its organs emptying and falling into the toxic water. The once mighty demon fell into the water, to be feasted on. More demons came out of the fog, of all shapes and sizes, forming a circle around Kendrick. Perhaps in the past he would have been more cautious, forming strategies and attacks in his head. But he had lived decades in this place, in constant pain and torment, and he had much hate and anger filling his thoughts.   
  
He sliced out, cutting a demon across the neck, the electricity going down its throat and frying its lungs. They swarmed on top of him, biting and slicing at him, their numbers in the dozen. Kendrick screamed, smelling their stinking bodies on him, their claws digging into him. Fighting the pain, he punched at the demon holding his sword arm, his fist burning with fire. A horned demon holding him down screamed and fell away as the sword dove up through his jaw and into his brain. Kendrick forced his way up from the mass of assaulting demons, blood running down from a dozen wounds. Clawed hands came up and tried to bring him back down, but Kendrick cut them away, leaving stumps spurting black blood. He continued screaming as he cut down into the demons still holding him down, who were biting and ripping at his legs. Thunder coursed through Kendrick's body, lashing out at the demons near him, stinging and burning them. They fell back, swearing and cursing him. He killed as many as he could, answering their curses with his blade. At last they retreated back into the swampy water or flew off into the mist, leaving Kendrick slumped on the ground, bleeding and alone once more.  
  
" Hate", Errtu once told him, " hate is what runs the worlds, offspring. Without hate, things would be at a stand still. Hate is what fuels beings to strive on in their petty existence. It made you kill your father, and look where that had gotten you." Errtu paused and starred at the big man lay cowering in the corner. With a flick of a whip, Errtu brought the spiked whip on the barbarian's back. Kendrick watched. He might have felt pity for Errtus prisoner, but he knew he was even more pathetic, a tick among maggots.  
"Hate keeps me warm while I wait for my revenge. " 


End file.
